For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

The Palestinians call the offer of an alternative capital in the village of Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, the "slap of the century," conveniently overlooking the fact that they rejected much more generous offers made by previous Israeli governments.

The abandoned Palestinian parliament building in Abu Dis is 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles) east of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. The Knesset is the same distance west of the holy site.

Back when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was serving as deputy to PLO founder Yasser Arafat, Abu Dis was known as "the second Jerusalem," a temporary substitute before the anticipated permanent division of the city. At the time, Abbas was willing to swallow this bitter pill, and even see Abu Dis decked out with various Palestinian government institutions.

But today the Trump administration is trying to put Abu Dis back on the table as part of the "deal of the century," and Abbas is denigrating it as the "slap of the century."

The penny dropped for Abbas when he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in December. In that meeting, he heard for the first time that U.S. President Donald Trump was offering the Palestinians Abu Dis instead of Jerusalem as their capital. That was when Abbas decided to hand the current White House its walking papers, which he did a month later.

Abbas sees the proposal as embarrassing, not to say humiliating. After two Israeli prime ministers – Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert – put the division of Jerusalem on the table (Barak at Camp David in 2000 and Olmert in 2008), the offer of Abu Dis as a capital comes a little too late. Jerusalem was nearly in their grasp, and now someone is pushing them back in time.

It is unclear who gave the Americans the idea to revert to the Abu Dis option. What is clear is that the village's not-very-distant-past status as an alternative to Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, especially Abbas' place in that option, gave the Americans grounds to assume they should give it another try.

Twenty years ago, Abbas and Israeli former minister Yossi Beilin worked together to draft their famous document of "understandings." It was not an agreement, merely an unofficial document that sketched out parameters for a permanent peace deal. When it came to Jerusalem, the two suggested expanding the city and establishing an umbrella municipality that would be managed by two sub-municipalities: Jewish Jerusalem and Arab Al-Quds.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

...Based on all these misstatements of fact, Akoob concludes: South Africa does not need the help of Israel to solve our drought. And just to make her point, Rumana Akoob is — apparently — willing to bet the very safety of the South African people on her views.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Algemiener.com..
15 February '18..

Is refusing Israeli help worth a drought? According to South Africa’s Rumana Akoob, writing in the Daily Vox and Mail & Guardian, the answer is (apparently): yes.

It’s a horrible fact: South Africa is running out of water. Cities like Cape Town are already cutting access and more cities are set to follow. South Africa has already declared the situation a national disaster.

It’s also a fact that Israel has offered to provide vitally needed assistance through its role as a world leader in drought prevention — through desalination.

But Akoob says:

This is not true. If Israelis have sufficient water, it’s only because they deny water rights to Palestine.

She then embarks on a screed about Israel’s supposedly harmful activities toward Palestinians in the area of water supply, referring to:

The colonial, apartheid state of Israel which continues to use water as a method of colonization and segregation.

There’s just one problem: the “water libel” against Israel is simply untrue.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Friday, February 16, 2018

In all the years of murderous conflict in Syria and Iraq, neither has experienced a humanitarian disaster in the form of a widespread crisis involving mass hunger and the spread of hunger-related diseases. Yet officials warn that such a crisis could unfold in Gaza. How likely is that prognosis? And if it does occur, what should Israel’s policy be?

Senior Israeli military officials are warning of an impending humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and many more officials – Israeli, European, and Palestinian – say the Gaza population will “explode” due to epidemics.

Really?

How come in all the years of the Syrian civil war, amid prolonged and incessant violence over seven years, there has not been a widespread humanitarian crisis in the form of mass hunger and the spread of hunger-related epidemics like typhoid?

How come in the two years of incessant war between ISIS and the allied coalition, the Russian air force, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Iraqi army, during which ISIS ruled over five million people, including Mosul’s one million-strong population, there was no evidence of massive hunger and contagious disease?

How likely, then, is such a crisis to befall Gaza?

The most important factor behind real humanitarian crises – the specter of mass hunger and contagious disease – is first and foremost the breakdown of law and order, and violence between warring militias and gangs. This is what occurred in Darfur, Somalia, and the Central African Republic. In such a situation, the first to leave are the relief agencies. Then local medical staffs evacuate, along with local government officials and anyone professional who can make it out of the bedlam. The destitute are left to fend for themselves. Hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and local government offices are soon abandoned or become scenes of grisly shootouts and reprisals.

Nothing could be farther from such a reality than Gaza. Hamas, which is the main source of this fake news of an imminent humanitarian crisis, rules Gaza with an iron fist. Few developed democracies in the world can boast the low homicide rates prevailing in Gaza. Nor have there been reports of any closings of hospitals, municipalities, schools, universities, colleges, or dispensaries.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...I really hoped that Sarah would see my point and speak to it. But she didn’t deign to respond. She’d doubled down, reiterated her talking points, and closed shop. Which is a pity. Because I want security and equality every bit as much as she. I want both Moshe and Mohammed to be safe. I want the terror and the fear to end. And that requires true equality, equality under the law, and not some silly superficial spectacle masquerading as the same.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
15 February '18..

New Media Editor Sarah Tuttle-Singer, of the Times of Israel introduced her newest blog, Why I want the security guy at the train station to search me, on the Times of Israel bloggers’ Facebook page with these words, “There are two things I care about when it comes to Israel: Security and equality. And this is why I say with no hesitation: Search Muhammed. And search me. Search everyone.”

The fallacy of these words hit me with immediate clarity. I knew what her blog said without reading it. She was going to say that everyone has to be checked by security guards, both Jew and Arab, in order to protect democracy—that equality means checking everyone, irrespective of whether or not they might be guilty.

But that isn’t equality. Equality is about holding everyone to the same societal standards. If Moshe is a bad boy, he goes to jail. If Mohammed is a bad boy he goes to jail. Because everyone is supposed to be good and obey the law. And when they don’t, there are repercussions.

Because that is how the security apparatus protects our liberties. They have intel. They use it to protect everyone. The intel is what it is. It’s what Moshe or Mohammed make it. And should Moshe’s or Mohammed’s relatives tend to be rowdy, they then become “the usual suspects” and anyone who looks, sounds, or acts like them is identified and scrutinized.

That’s how we protect equality. By making sure that everyone has the right to safety and security. And by setting standards of appropriate behavior. And making sure there are consequences to bad behavior.

And if Moshe or Mohammed don’t want their families scrutinized, they need to behave. Period.

But let’s say one relative doesn’t go along with the rowdy bunch. He’s a good guy. Is it fair that he be profiled, scrutinized, his liberties temporarily curtailed?

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Experts see no way to alleviate the economic crisis. Except, you know, not spending billions of dollars on trying to murder Jews.

Liel Leibovitz..
Tabletmag.com..
13 February '18..

This past Sunday, The New York Times treated its readers to another sad story straight out of Gaza. Here’s a representative sample: “’We are dead, but we have breath,’ said Zakia Abu Ajwa, 57, who now cooks greens normally fed to donkeys for her three small grandchildren.”

How to account for such misery? The Paper of Record is on it: Citing Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group and other “Gaza experts,” the Times grimly found that “Hamas itself has few ways to alleviate the crisis.”

Now, I’m no Gaza expert myself, but sad stories of starved children break my heart, so I grabbed the nearest napkin and did some math. Which, mind you, is not easy, because Hamas, like every self-respecting terrorist organization, takes care to hide its assets well.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

...The nine journalists from Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen were invited by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. But Abbas's ministry denounced the visit and called for blacklisting and punishing the Arab journalists for promoting "normalization" with Israel. How, exactly, do these condemnations conform with Abbas's other claims that he seeks to resume peace talks with Israel?

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
14 February '18..

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas continues to say one thing to his people, and an entirely different thing to the international community.

To Arab audiences, Abbas describes Israel and the US administration as not far short of Satan incarnate.

When the PA president sends a message to the international community, however, he shows a different face.

Ever since US President Donald Trump's December announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Abbas and his top aides in Ramallah have been consistently signaling to the Palestinians that the peace process with Israel is "over."

The Palestinians have also been assured by Abbas that Israel and the US will pay dearly for the recognition.

Abbas has promised, among other things, to revoke the PLO recognition of Israel, halt security coordination in the West Bank, and abrogate previous agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel, beginning with the Oslo Accords.

Two key decision-making bodies, the Fatah Central Council and the PLO Executive Committee, have recommended in recent weeks that the Palestinian leadership endorse these measures. Notably, Abbas chaired the meetings of the two bodies in Ramallah.

The message emerging from the meetings of the Palestinian leaders in Ramallah is that the Palestinians will not "return" to the negotiating table with Israel and that the US administration is an enemy of all Palestinians.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Palestinians constantly talk about how important dignity is to them. Is cleaning a hospital, allowing patients to be treated, too undignified for them? This story isn't only about a labor dispute, nor is it only about a political dispute that puts people's lives at risk. It is also a story about how an entire culture has sprouted up where people are taught only to complain about what they claim to deserve - but that they aren't willing to lift a finger to help themselves.

Elder of Ziyon..
14 February '18..

Today is the fourth day of the strike by hospital cleaning staff in Gaza who have not been paid their salaries by the Palestinian authority.

There is no solution on the horizon.

Dr. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, warned this morning of major health setbacks in cancer patients and those with blood diseases because of the lack of hygiene in hospitals.

"The suspension of cleaning companies poses a direct threat to the health of patients and public health in 13 hospitals, 51 primary care centers and 22 other facilities in the Ministry of Health through 13 companies," he said.

Photos of the hospitals with overflowing trash are being published in the Palestinian media.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

If the people of Gaza are suffering, blame the leaders and the terror groups they support for spending on weapons and tunnels, not on infrastructure and building an economy.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
12 February '18..

Gaza is broke. As Monday’s front-page New York Times feature explained at length, the conflict between the Gaza Strip’s Hamas overlords and the Fatah party that runs the West Bank has resulted in a cash crunch that has left many of the compact area’s 2 million people without money. Along with Gaza’s inadequate infrastructure, the resulting poverty from this crisis contributes to a general picture of despair for many Palestinians.

Of course, the notion that everyone in Gaza is starving is an exaggeration. As journalist Tom Gross points out, Gaza’s thriving malls continue to operate, as does its water park, restaurants and hotels, inconvenient facts that are missing from the Times story and most of the coverage of the current crisis.

But even if we concede that the talk of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is probably exaggerated if for no other reason than we’ve been hearing variations on this theme for 25 years, there’s no question that most of the people there are poor and have little hope of improving their plight.

This means, as it almost always does, that Israel will be blamed for this awful situation. Since the world considers that Israel is still “occupying” Gaza, and is therefore responsible for the coastal territory’s problems, it is only natural that the worse things get there, the more opprobrium will be directed at the Jewish state in international forums and the press.

This is wrong, but not just because Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

...This non-event of an article once again makes it blatantly obvious that the supposedly ‘impartial’ BBC has elected to lend its voice and outreach to promotion of a blatantly political campaign.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
14 February '18..

On February 13th the BBC News website published an article titled “Ahed Tamimi: Palestinian viral slap video teen goes on trial” which was presented to audiences together with two items of recycled ‘related reading’: a highly problematic filmed report by Jeremy Bowen dating from January 31st (also embedded in the report itself) and a written report by Yolande Knell from January 17th.

Readers were told that:

“A Palestinian teenage girl filmed slapping an Israeli soldier has gone on trial in an Israeli military court in a case which has split public opinion.Ahed Tamimi, 17, is charged with 12 offences, including assaulting security forces and incitement to violence.If convicted, she could face a lengthy jail term.”

However, as has been the case in the majority of the BBC’s copious past reporting on Ahed Tamimi’s arrest and indictment, this article too failed to provide readers with details of her call for violence on social media which is the basis of that incitement charge.

Given the article’s title and introductory paragraphs, readers of its first version may have been surprised to find that it actually told them nothing at all about the trial itself.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Once again, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has spoken simple words of truth, and once again he’s under attack from the Palestinian Authority and the Jewish left.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
13 February '18..

Once again, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has spoken simple words of truth, and once again he’s under attack from the Palestinian Authority and the Jewish left. It seems that having a thick skin is one of the most important qualifications for serving as America’s ambassador to Israel.

Following a Palestinian terrorist’s fatal stabbing of Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal—a father of four young children—Friedman tweeted, “20 years ago I gave an ambulance to Har Bracha hoping it would be used to deliver healthy babies. Instead, a man from Har Bracha was just murdered by a terrorist, leaving behind a wife and four children. Palestinian ‘leaders’ have praised the killer.”

The news that Friedman donated an ambulance to Har Bracha infuriated Gideon Levy, a veteran columnist for the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who wrote an article mockingly (if awkwardly) titled, “U.S. Ambassador to Israel’s Ambulance.”

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Unreal - the PA, which only allowed Israel to restore electricity to Gaza when threatened by Israel, which withholds funds for hospitals and medicines and fuel for Gaza, is complaining when Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza - and blames Israel for the situation there, a situation that the PA has been actively exacerbating for the past year! If only there was a truly free Palestinian media.

Elder of Ziyon..
13 February '18..

Every week, Rami Hamdallah, the "prime minister" of the Palestinian Authority, a person who has no real power, has a cabinet meeting where pronouncements are made and nothing is actually done.

The statements do show how much the Palestinian Authority likes to fool itself, and its own people.

This week the statements included:

The Israeli government will pass a law to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, annexing settlement blocs and retaining the Jordan Valley. The Judaization and uprooting confirms the insistence of the Israeli government to renounce all agreements between the parties, a clear expression of its unwillingness to peace or any intention to reach a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Israel has tried to negotiate, the Palestinians refuse. Israel has shown willingness to compromise, Palestinians haven't. But the lies continue.

Taking such a step would not only be the end of the two-state solution, but the end of any hope for peace and would have repercussions for the entire region.

I am still astounded that these regular threats - couched in terms of warnings - aren't recognized as such by the West.

And let me remind you of how seriously the Palestinians take the "two state solution" that they insist they want.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Mahmoud Abbas’s blatantly skewed account of the nature of Zionism and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should bring Israel’s policymakers and opinion shapers to enunciate anew the story they tell their own people and the world at large.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the January 14 meeting of the PLO’s Central Council lasted two hours. Apart from the phrase “May your house be destroyed,” which became the headline for the speech, Abbas’s “historical” survey of the chronicle of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has drawn most of the Israeli criticism. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the survey underscored the root of the conflict: “The Palestinians’ rejection of the existence of a Jewish state in any borders.”

For the Palestinians, too, particularly the younger among them, much of the speech must have sounded like a tiresome history lesson. Yet political speeches of this kind often have more than one audience in mind. In this case, Israeli society with its various factions and leaders, along with the international community, was the main audience. Appealing to fashionable legal and moral fads, particularly in Western Europe, Abbas again set forth the supposedly problematic aspects of Zionism. His “historical survey” undoubtedly fails the minimum test of facts, but it is uncritically accepted in many circles. This poses a real challenge to Israeli policymakers and opinion shapers.

By every historical account, the Zionist revolution – the incredible ingathering of the exiles and the establishment of the flourishing and highly successful state of Israel – is a unique and unprecedented phenomenon. Those who insist on viewing it as yet another immigration wave among the 20th century global population movements fail to grasp the real nature of this revolution. In this respect, Abbas touched the key issue that, in his eyes, made the Palestinians the main victim of Zionism: if the Jews yearn for a safe haven, and the international community wants to provide them with one, why does it have to be in Palestine, at the Palestinians’ expense?

Of all the leaders of the Zionist movement, it was Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who dealt most extensively with the kinds of claims made by Abbas. Below are several passages from Abbas’s address followed by statements by Ben-Gurion on the same topic.

Abbas: “How did the problem in our region begin? They talk about the Balfour Declaration, promulgated a hundred years ago. They criticize us – why do we talk about something that happened a hundred years ago? And we say: ‘We will keep talking about the declaration until Britain apologizes and recognizes a Palestinian state’.”

Ben-Gurion: “Our right to the Land of Israel does not stem from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It precedes those. The Bible is our mandate… I can state in the name of the Jewish People: The Bible is our mandate, the Bible that was written by us in our Hebrew language, and in this land itself, is our mandate. Our historical right has existed since our beginnings as the Jewish People, and the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate recognize and confirm that right” (testimony to the Peel Royal Commission, January 1937, Bama’archa, vol. 1, pp. 77-78).

“A homeland is not given as a gift and is not acquired by means of political rights and contracts. It is not purchased with gold and is not conquered by force, but is built with sweat. This homeland is a historical creation and a collective endeavor of a people, the fruit of its physical, spiritual, and moral labor down through the generations. … The Land of Israel will be ours not when the Turks, the English, or the next peace conference agrees to it, and it is undersigned in a diplomatic treaty – but when we, the Jews, build it. We will not attain the real, true, and lasting right to the land from others, but from our labor. For the Land of Israel to be ours, we must build it; the mission of our revival movement is the building of the land” (New York, September 1915, Mema’amad Le’am, p. 10).

...Anything that thwarts the revolutionary regime in Iran can be held to have a salutary effect. But the more such effects there are, the more Iran will shift tactics and try to create problems where problems are advantageous to Iran. That’s not a caution against thwarting Iran. It’s a reality check. I think Iran pulled this latest stunt because things aren’t going the mullahs’ way at the moment. But the right response for the U.S. and Israel is to slap back hard when the revolutionary regime tries to create new problems.

In the wake of Saturday’s intrusion by an Iranian drone into Israeli air space, which was followed by Israeli strikes on targets in Syria and the shootdown of an IAF F-16I, the commentary has been predictable.

This is unquestionably “big.” The last Israeli warplane lost in combat was more than three decades ago, in the first Lebanon war in 1982. (A helicopter was lost in 2006.) Judging by Syrian regime-friendly reporting and themes in social media, regime forces are over the moon about their achievement in bagging an IAF “Sufa.”

But it’s also the biggest counter-strike by Israeli forces in Syria since the civil war erupted there in 2011. The IAF has conducted comparatively large-scale strikes on logistic and infrastructure targets in the last several years, interdicting, among other things, deliveries from Iran and convoys to Hezbollah. But counter-strikes against weapon systems involved in surveillance of, and attacks, or potential attacks, on Israeli targets or territory, have been very limited.

In fact, the Israeli attack package on Saturday was also limited, compared to what it could have been. Especially after the F-16I shootdown, Israel could have justifiably chosen to attack more targets – but did not. In not retaliating further for the F-16I shootdown, the Israelis de-escalated first.

I assume they did that because their tactical intelligence told them Iran and Syria were not about to escalate further.

But that doesn’t mean Iran’s gambit was a one-off. It certainly doesn’t mean that it represented no real danger, or that Israel overreacted.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Twenty-five years after the disastrous Oslo Accords, Israel is no closer to peace with its immediate Arab neighbors and there is no end in sight to the conflict with PLO and Hamas that has claimed countless Israeli lives and created friction within the Jewish people.

Many liberals, Jews as well non-Jews, increasingly place the blame for this on Israel and accuse the Jewish state of “lacking a vision” for the future. According to them, Muslim Arabs are hapless victims that can do no wrong, while Israel is a “brutal occupier” that can do nothing right. Widespread Muslim genocidal Jew-hatred and opposition to Israel’s very existence, is conveniently swept under the rug and ignored.

Israel though, did make enormous efforts to obtain peace. It made tangible sacrifices. The image of PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the White House in 1993, left many Israelis with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism. Since Israel was tired of war and yearned for peace, many Israelis were prepared then to try the international leftist initiated “Land for Peace” formula. Liberals quickly claimed a monopoly on “peace”. They demonized anyone who opposed the leftist policies as an “enemy of peace”. The Oslo Accords also led to an increased demonization of Israel and a legitimization of the terrorist organization PLO.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. A “peace process” that is detached from reality is doomed to fail, but much of the left still refuses to let harsh facts get in the way of their ideology. According to this Orwellian worldview, the absence of peace is a result of Israeli failure to “deliver” what the Arabs demand. Western mainstream media and academia have long compromised their professionalism by abandoning their role as investigative truth-seekers in favor of ideological anti-Israel warfare.

Fast-forward to 2018 and it is obvious to the vast majority of sober-minded people that the Oslo Accords with PLO have failed to solve the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Monday, February 12, 2018

...To put this in context, the PLO budgets over $28 million a month to pay both prisoner salaries and and families of "martyrs." They willingly pay 100 times the amount needed for keeping hospitals open - to terrorists.

Elder of Ziyon..
12 February '18..

From Times of Israel:

Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, announced on Sunday that it was suspending all surgeries, with the exception of emergency cases, due to a cleaners’ strike over unpaid salaries.“It has been decided to postpone all scheduled surgeries, including those for patients with tumors,” the hospital said, noting that the decision excluded “life-saving cases.”The strike, which began on Sunday, threatens patients’ and workers’ lives because of the dangerous accumulation of medical garbage in the hospital, the staff warned.It was the second time in recent weeks that the hospital cleaners in the Gaza Strip went on strike.Last month, the cleaners agreed to return to work after the Palestinian Authority government promised to pay them their salaries. However, the government has since paid salaries for only two months, prompting the cleaners to renew their strike.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...While there is no evidence to support either that Syrian claim of having hit “more than one plane” or Iran’s assertion that it did not launch the drone , the BBC continues to amplify those claims regardless. Meanwhile, as details of Saturday’s events were still emerging, a BBC News producer found the time to translate and amplify disinformation from another source too.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
12 February '18..

As we saw in part one of this post the BBC News website’s written report on the infiltration of Israel’s air-space by an Iranian UAV and the events that followed amplified Iranian and Syrian disinformation on the story while also implying to audiences that there is room for doubt regarding the veracity of official Israeli accounts of the various incidents.

“The Israeli military says a “combat helicopter successfully intercepted an Iranian UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that was launched from Syria and infiltrated Israel”.It tweeted footage which it says shows the drone flying into Israeli territory before being hit.” [emphasis added]“Meanwhile Iran and the Tehran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon – which are allied with the Syrian government – dismissed reports that an Iranian drone had entered Israeli airspace as a “lie”.”“Syrian state media quoted a military source as saying that the country’s air defences had opened fire in response to Israeli “aggression” against a military base on Saturday, hitting “more than one plane”.”

On the same day – February 10th – the BBC News website also posted a filmed report on the same topic titled “Israeli jet downed during Syrian attack: What happened?“. The film’s synopsis makes no mention of the UAV infiltration that was the cause of the subsequent strike on the mobile command vehicle that launched and guided the Iranian drone at the T4 airbase near Tadmor in central Syria.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...Perhaps with this latest unhinged and scorched earth attempt to dictate Israeli policy, the citizens and government will sensibly conclude that maybe it is the New Israel Fund that should be deported.

The American-based New Israel Fund (NIF) has never hidden its mission to save Israel from itself, and its bedrock conviction that the chauvinist particularism of a Jewish State should be replaced with a more "democratic" state of its citizens.

Implicit in this posture is a belief that the enlightened folks at the NIF know better than we Israelis what is in our best interest, and even what is the moral high ground in any given situation irrespective of the real world considerations that would apply.

While we have seen time and time again the NIF supporting organizations that bolster BDS, accuse Israel of war crimes and slander Israel as an apartheid state, in its current hissy fit over the planned deportation of tens of thousands of illegal African migrants back to third party African nations, the NIF has thrown all decency to the wind.

The NIF has chosen to liken the illegal migrants to Holocaust survivors, with the clear and deliberate implication that Israel must be likened to the Nazis.

By doing so, and by standing by as its supported organizations use Holocaust-themed analogies such as demeaning the memory of Anne Frank, the NIF has clearly telegraphed that there are no red lines, there are no off-limits depictions, arguments or tactics.

Perhaps this complete lack of restraint and over the top contempt is a function of having lost the usual reliable support of the Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling in August 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting with a five court panel (instead of the usual three) upheld voluntary deportations and specifically stated that there was no proof that the illegal migrants faced danger in being sent to third party African countries such as Rwanda and Uganda.

Without popular support, government support, and now the support of the Supreme Court, the NIF has decided to engage in a smoke and mirrors pseudo-populist uprising, in which its supported organizations have gone to the barricades to accuse Israel of not only heartless, cruel and inhumane behavior, but of being complicit in murder.

The NIF can therefore add blood libels to its head-on collision through the red lines of decency. Implying that Israel is knowingly sending the illegal migrants to their deaths deserves a place of infamy right alongside the blood of Christian children being used to make matzah.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

...Would the Jewish State be in a better position to weather dramatic changes after taking substantive action relating to the Palestinians even though such action promises, at least in the short run, a significant negative reaction from the world? Or, alternatively, would perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians find us better equipped to face such unforeseen developments?

It's not the lack of a backbone that drives Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's ongoing policy of perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians.

I say "ongoing" because the explanations publicly offered for the postponements come off like part of a Mad Libs game ("Prime Minister Netanyahu told insiders that it is advisable to postpone _____ until after ____ because relations with the U.S. Administration are _____ ").

It’s the very serious assessment that the Jewish State will be in a better situation in the future.

With every passing year our economy shifts in favor of trade with countries that don't link business to non-business concerns thus increasing our capacity to deal with economic sanctions that substantive action relating to the Palestinians might yield.

Our informal relations with the Saudis and others are continually improving just as the true interest of the Arabs states in the lot of the Palestinians continues to erode.

We are constantly developing and implementing military technologies that promise a better outcome in a conflict that takes places after a given suite of technologies is implemented as compared to a clash occurring before the technology is in place.

And finally: the demographic argument.

A central element of the policy debate is the validity of very encouraging demographic projections that promise a solid Jewish majority even under a so-called "one state solution."

Kicking the Palestinian can down the road allows for ultimately making dramatic decisions based on demographic conditions rather than demographic projections.

So is perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians the right policy?

...Webster's Dictionary defines pretext as "a reason that you give to hide your real reason for doing something." The chain of events (an account of which can be found here) proves otherwise. The phrase "pretext" is journalistically imprecise, misleading and violates The Post's own standards for fairness in reporting.

The Washington Post has treated an Iranian attack against Israel with unwarranted skepticism, using the event to unfairly question the motives of the Israeli military.

The Post asserted in a Feb. 10, 2018 report (“Israel claims incursion by Iranian drone”) that the Jewish state used an Iranian drone’s “alleged incursion” into Israeli airspace as a “pretext for Israeli strikes on what it described as Iranian targets in Syria.” The Post’s claim was part of a problematic and inaccurate caption that accompanied a video that the paper posted online to describe events that transpired in the early morning hours of Feb. 10, 2018.

As the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) noted, the IDF intercepted an Iranian made unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) after it entered Israeli airspace from Syria. During the attack, several anti-aircraft missiles were launched at Israeli fighter jets and sirens sounded in northern Israel. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) responded by engaging twelve targets, including three aerial defense batteries and four Iranian military targets, all of which were located in Syria. An Israeli attack helicopter successfully destroyed the Iranian UAV. An IAF F-16 jet also crashed, after its two pilots ejected. The pilots are currently hospitalized and it's unclear at the time of this writing what led to the downing of the IAF plane.

The IDF has released footage showing the Iranian drone infiltrating Israeli airspace and the IDF’s response.

However, in its report, The Washington Post—without reason or explanation—sought to impugn the IDF’s motives and obfuscate on what happened. The paper wrote “the Israeli military released video it said shows an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace on Feb. 10, before it was destroyed by an Israeli attack helicopter. The alleged incursion was used as the pretext for Israeli strikes on what it described as Iranian targets in Syria [emphasis added].”

... I wonder if Dabashi considers building mosques on the sites of the Jewish Temples, churches, Hindu temples and other non-Muslim places of worship to be cultural theft. Might be a good topic for his pseudo-scholarship.

Elder of Ziyon..
09 February '18..

I know I shouldn't be astonished anymore by how much nonsense a person with a PhD can spew, but...I still am.

From the Facebook page of Columbia University Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature Hamid Dabashi:

The Woman’s March has now emerged as a major movement in the US and of course the Zionists have deeply infiltrated it the way they infiltrated the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and sought to twist it to the advantage of Israel —

I once posted a full page ad by the Black Americans to Support Israel Committee, which was signed by hundreds of prominent African-Americans in support of Israel from Hank Aaron to Andrew Young.

According to Dabashi, they were all duped by Zionists. Which means that Dabashi doesn't think that African Americans are smart enough to think for themselves.

Yes, that is racism.

Scarlet Johansson is a violent Zionist deeply committed to the systemic theft of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland— she appears on commercials selling Israeli products made on the stolen and occupied Palestinians lands — her appearance on Women’s March rallies deeply compromises the moral authority of the movement —

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Every single element of the process, whether it is ‘free speech on Israel’, ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’ or viscous university events such as this, have all gone out of their way to deny the problem of antisemitism and thus to allow it to flourish. Jewish students are left sitting in a room and having their accusations of racism publicly demonised and ridiculed. Free speech? No, it has a cost and Warwick really have to get a grip on this. Calling on Jews in the 21st century to convert or else be demonised is no way to run an academic establishment.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
09 February '18..

Three days ago, on 6th Feb, the University of Warwick held another anti-Israel meeting. The third such event in a month. Rather than directly discuss Israel, they wanted to focus on antisemitism. Or as it turned out to focus on how there isn’t really much of it about. Antisemitism is apparently rare these days, and the only reason it is in the news, is because Jews are a mix of devious, stupid and heartless people. Jews make up charges of anti-Jewish racism, and are then mobilised by western governments to suppress freedoms, so that land-grabbing Jews elsewhere can carry on killing children without criticism. No it isn’t a quote, but it is the inherent logic of the evening.

The event was titled ‘Palestinian rights, Prevent’ and the Misuse of antisemitism‘. This follows the argument that rather than being used to shed light on unacceptable hatred and defend victims of anti-Jewish racism, an accusation of antisemitism is a weapon at war, designed to silence all criticism of Israel.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Friday, February 9, 2018

...There is no better example of both the honor/shame culture and the zero-sum game mentality of the Arabs than this article.

Elder of Ziyon..
08 February '18..

Haaretz reported last week:

Representatives of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States participated in an emergency conference in Brussels on Wednesday of countries and organizations that provide financial support for Palestinians.Israel presented humanitarian assistance plans at the gathering for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip with a focus on desalination, electricity and natural gas infrastructure projects in addition to upgrading of the industrial zone at the Erez border crossing with Israel. The total cost of the projects is estimated at a billion dollars, which Israel asked the international community to fund.The plan was first reported by Haaretz.Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who represented Israel at the conference, presented the plans but noted that carrying them out would require that the PA take responsibility for civilian life in Gaza, which has been under the control of Hamas since the Islamist movement forcefully ousted the PA there in 2007.

Middle East Memo, a pro-Hamas site, says that anything Israel suggests must be bad for Palestinians and must be resisted.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...If the Times thinks these claims are newsworthy, fine. But readers would be better served by more Shipler-style skepticism, context, and fact-checking, and less credulousness.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
08 February '18..

Israelis stole folk dancing from the Palestinian Arabs in an act of “cultural appropriation,” The New York Times claims.

The accusation is made in a question-and-answer style interview in the Times arts section conducted by a Times dance critic, Siobhan Burke, with a choreographer, Hadar Ahuvia.

The Times article, which is accompanied online by three photographs and a video, includes this passage:

One issue you explore is cultural appropriation, how the pioneers of Israeli folk dance, mostly Eastern European women, drew from social dance forms like Palestinian dabke.It’s well-documented that these women went to Palestinian villages and watched them dancing and felt they held the steps for what new Israeli dances could be. And so they borrowed steps and wrote new music and created dances that were directly synchronous to the new music, and in this way it becomes a new Israeli dance.This was their way of participating in the nation-building and what for them was this revolutionary moment. I don’t think that cultural exchange is bad, but I think it’s about the context of whose narratives get told and seen.

This is an old claim. What’s new is the Times letting it slide unchallenged.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

...The fact is that the deterioration of Gaza's water aquifers is a perfect reflection of the deterioration of the Oslo Accords. It is not a military or diplomatic issue, but rather a refusal to take any responsibility for providing basic infrastructure that is essential for maintaining the most fundamental aspects of life – preventing disease and death. If only they dug sewer tunnels for the betterment of Gaza rather than terror tunnels to the detriment of Israel.

According to a 2016 Haaretz interview with Adnan Ghosheh, a senior water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank, the Gaza Strip will become uninhabitable for human beings by 2020.

This grim forecast is supported by the Institute for National Security Studies in a report titled "Water and Energy Crisis in Gaza: Snapshot 2017."

According to the report, the "lack of clean water for domestic use and unsafe sanitary conditions pose a serious public health threat to the two million people living in the Gaza Strip. By now, large amounts of untreated wastewater have already crossed Gaza's borders and created additional repercussions for several neighboring communities in Egypt and Israel, with Israel at one point forced to close two of its beaches."

When unlimited drinking water flows from the taps in Ashkelon, just north of Gaza, it is too easy to accuse Israel of unjustly dividing this precious resource, as self-righteous Israelis, and Europeans, sometimes do. These voices continue to condescend, absolving the local leadership of any responsibility. But it is the Palestinian leaders who actually bear the blame for this disgraceful situation.

The fact is that the deterioration of Gaza's water aquifers is a perfect reflection of the deterioration of the Oslo Accords. It is not a military or diplomatic issue, but rather a refusal to take any responsibility for providing basic infrastructure that is essential for maintaining the most fundamental aspects of life – preventing disease and death. If only they dug sewer tunnels for the betterment of Gaza rather than terror tunnels to the detriment of Israel.

It very well may be that in their heart of hearts, at least as far as water is concerned, the residents of Gaza actually miss Israeli rule. In the days of direct Israeli administration of Gaza, Arabs had access to the same good water their Jewish neighbors enjoyed, coming from 1,400 local wells. The drilling of the coastal aquifer was supervised and the water was pumped with great care.

But then, in 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, and the water industry was left unsupervised. Unbridled drilling quadrupled the number of wells to around 6,000, with most being dug by individuals in crisis because Hamas authorities failed to provide the population with basic amenities. The lack of investment in a sewage systems resulted in the contamination of the water in the aquifers. Leaky pipes now lose around 38% of the water that runs through them, according to 2017 World Bank report. No one is even mentioning the notion of recycling waste water for use in agriculture and very little has been done to increase water supply through desalination.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

...I knew what was bugging the Quora moderators here, I won’t pretend I didn’t. They didn’t want me speaking of “Jews” and “Arabs” but of “Zionist settlers” and “Palestinians villagers” as the OP did. They didn’t want me to challenge the assertions of the poster, but see things from his or her point of view.

The question is by way of asserting an untruth: that there is some sort of mutuality to the Arab war against the Jews (see: The Arab War Against the Jews). Jews don’t attack Arabs. The opposite is true: Arabs attack Jews.This fact has nothing to do with settlement, which has only to do with housing. There is nothing wrong with housing, by the way, unless you believe that Jews have no right to live in homes. Which would be an extremely racist position to hold.This project you mention is total anti-Israel propaganda because of the question it asks, which, like the question you ask, asserts an untruth, and there is no balance to the assertion. The project cannot quell what does not exist.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"